The Sexed Brain: Between Science and Ideology

Women and men in orthopaedics

PURPOSE

To compare and discuss the gender disparities in the Orthopaedic specialty.

METHODS

We reviewed the literature to find the rates of women applying for an orthopaedic residency, fellowship, and academic career program, to understand the causes of the disparities in women in orthopaedics, and how this relates to orthopaedic surgical practice.

RESULTS

The idea that men and women are different and have different working styles and skills and the belief that males are more dominant and more status-worthy than females leads to gender barriers and stereotypes that restrict women from entering male-dominated specialties. It is important to mention that equivalent barriers restrict men from pursuing female-dominated specialties such as Gynecology. Economic disparities and gender stereotypes that divide medical specialties into masculine and feminine, creating a gender gap in health care are major concerns. However, the number of women in the health sector is expected to increase due to the growing amount of female students that are expected to soon graduate. A leadership gender gap also exists; although women consist of 70% of the health care workforce they occupy only 25% of leadership positions.

CONCLUSION

The existence of gender-based disparities in healthcare is multifactorial. The explanation behind the existence of a so-called gender gap lies in organizational and individual factors. Early development and family relations, the decision between work and life balance, personal choices and interests, as well as working conditions, absence of role models and mentorship and institutional policies make gender disparities even more evident.

Engendering Harm: A Critique of Sex Selection For "Family Balancing"

The most benign rationale for sex selection is deemed to be "family balancing." On this view, provided the sex distribution of an existing offspring group is "unbalanced," one may legitimately use reproductive technologies to select the sex of the next child. I present four novel concerns with granting "family balancing" as a justification for sex selection: (a) families or family subsets should not be subject to medicalization; (b) sex selection for "family balancing" entrenches heteronormativity, inflicting harm in at least three specific ways; (c) the logic of affirmative action is appropriated; (d) the moral mandate of reproductive autonomy is misused. I conclude that the harms caused by family balancing are sufficiently substantive to override any claim arising from a supposed right to sex selection as an instantiation of procreative autonomy.

Sex differences, gender and addiction

This review discusses alcohol and other forms of drug addiction as both a sociocultural and biological phenomenon. Sex differences and gender are not solely determined by biology, nor are they entirely sociocultural. The interactions among biological, environmental, sociocultural, and developmental influences result in phenotypes that may be more masculine or more feminine. These gender-related sex differences in the brain can influence the responses to drugs of abuse, progressive changes in the brain after exposure to drugs of abuse and whether addiction results from drug-taking experiences. In addition, the basic laboratory evidence for sex differences is discussed within the context of four types of sex/gender differences. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The DSM-5 and the Politics of Diagnosing Transpeople

In the DSM-5, there has been a change in the diagnosis for transpeople of all ages from Gender Identity Disorder (GID) to Gender Dysphoria (GD), in part to better indicate the distress that transpeople may experience when their gender identity feels incongruent. The Workgroup for Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, chaired by Kenneth J. Zucker, was employed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to update the DSM-5's GID diagnosis reflecting contemporary scientific knowledge. Additionally, in a pre-publication report to the APA, members of the Workgroup suggested that they would also be concerned with the destigmatization of transpeople while preserving a diagnosis that medical insurance companies would accept for issuing payments for transitioning treatments (Drescher, 2013). The aims of this article are, firstly, to question whether changing the diagnosis lessens the stigmatization of transpeople. I will suggest that the semantic change from GID to GD marks "inverted" gendered expressions as pathological and, thus, continues to stigmatize transpeople. Secondly, the article explores the development of the GD diagnosis, and illustrates how the scientific data this were founded on are contentious. The article then demonstrates how the trans anti-pathologization movement has challenged the perceived pathologizing effects of the DSM-5 classification of GD. The article examines a selection of Western transgender community advocates' websites, forums, and blogs. From these sources, the article then explores the different narratives of transpeople and political groups who offer details of their praxis, and evidences how the trans anti-pathologization advocates use the available science and human rights discourses to contest the role of psychiatry in the treatment of transpeople.

Gender on the brain: a case study of science communication in the new media environment

Neuroscience research on sex difference is currently a controversial field, frequently accused of purveying a ‘neurosexism’ that functions to naturalise gender inequalities. However, there has been little empirical investigation of how information about neurobiological sex difference is interpreted within wider society. This paper presents a case study that tracks the journey of one high-profile study of neurobiological sex differences from its scientific publication through various layers of the public domain. A content analysis was performed to ascertain how the study was represented in five domains of communication: the original scientific article, a press release, the traditional news media, online reader comments and blog entries. Analysis suggested that scientific research on sex difference offers an opportunity to rehearse abiding cultural understandings of gender. In both scientific and popular contexts, traditional gender stereotypes were projected onto the novel scientific information, which was harnessed to demonstrate the factual truth and normative legitimacy of these beliefs. Though strains of misogyny were evident within the readers’ comments, most discussion of the study took pains to portray the sexes’ unique abilities as equal and ‘complementary’. However, this content often resembled a form of benevolent sexism, in which praise of women’s social-emotional skills compensated for their relegation from more esteemed trait-domains, such as rationality and productivity. The paper suggests that embedding these stereotype patterns in neuroscience may intensify their rhetorical potency by lending them the epistemic authority of science. It argues that the neuroscience of sex difference does not merely reflect, but can actively shape the gender norms of contemporary society.

Nursing and the new biology: towards a realist, anti-reductionist approach to nursing knowledge

As a system of knowledge, nursing has utilized a range of subjects and reconstituted them to reflect the thinking and practice of health care. Often drawn to a holistic model, nursing finds it difficult to resist the reductionist tendencies in biological and medical thinking. In this paper I will propose a relational approach to knowledge that is able to address this issue. The paper argues that biology is not characterized by one stable theory but is often a contentious topic and employs philosophically diverse models in its scientific research. Biology need not be seen as a reductionist science, but reductionism is nonetheless an important current within biological thinking. These reductionist currents can undermine nursing knowledge in four main ways. Firstly, that the conclusions drawn from reductionism go far beyond their data based on an approach that prioritizes biological explanations and eliminates others. Secondly, that the methods employed by biologists are sometimes weak, and the limitations are insufficiently acknowledged. Thirdly, that the assumptions that drive the research agenda are problematic, and finally that uncritical application of these ideas can be potentially disastrous for nursing practice. These issues are explored through an examination of the problems reductionism poses for the issue of gender, mental health, and altruism. I then propose an approach based on critical realism that adopts an anti-reductionist philosophy that utilizes the conceptual tools of emergence and a relational ontology.